Saturday, 12 January 2013

Mothercare App Review and Launch

Mothercare have had a very busy year, launching their new blog only a few short months ago and now they have just launched their very first iPhone app.

I was lucky enough to be invited along to the official launch in London back in December, where Myleene Klass unveiled the app to an eager crowd of journalists, and of course little old me!

The new Mothercare app has a whole array of great features that will help any parent or parent to be on their journey into parenthood and beyond. You can personalise the app and tailor it completely to you, if you are pregnant you can enter your due date or your child’s birth date and above all else it is so simple and easy to use.

Baby Tunes features music and whitenoise for bump, baby and growing children. This is a fab part of the app as back when Leo was born I paid for an app that had much less than this, and Mothercare have included it for free!

Mothercare tv features advice from a great array of people such as Zita West on trying to conceive to Myleene Klass and her own personal experiences with her little one! A really handy bit is the section on breastfeeding, I know this would have been very welcome in those early days with Leo.

There is a great section on ‘Pregnancy week by week’ that shows you how your baby is developing from one stage to another. There is an ‘information’ section that tells you everything about your current gestation, what to expect and sometimes what you wouldn’t expect!

When I was pregnant I loved following each stage of pregnancy and reading all about what was going on inside, I wanted to know how big baby was and what he was learning to do with each passing week but I soon ended up with dozens of different apps that did different things, and I longed for one that had everything all in one place.

Being pregnant was completely alien to me; I had no idea about what I would need from packing my hospital bag to what my baby would wear! I spent many hours sat at the computer on Google trying to work out what I would need, and what I wouldn’t. The Mothercare App has checklists that will tell you exactly what you will need in your hospital bag for both yourself and baby, baby clothes that are essentials, and even things you will need or covet during pregnancy. Mothercare seem to have a list that fits every occasion and I know that it would have been a godsend to me back then, and would definitely have reassured me that I did have everything I was going to need.

The app allows you to shop directly on Mothercare from your iPhone or iPad, and a lovely feature is the wish list function. The wish list function runs along the product pages so that when you find the perfect item you can favourite it by clicking on the star icon. The item you have selected will then appear on your home screen in ‘my lists’ under ‘wish list’. You then know the exact product that you are looking for and can come back to it at any time.

Now if you read the Mothercare blog then you may have come across a post I recently wrote about the difficulties we faced in naming Leo. Any pregnant Mother to be is going to spend so much time going over names, changing her mind and then also trying to keep up with Dad who will more than likely have a completely different view on each name that you would choose. That is why the name generator on the app is fantastic, the list of names runs in alphabetical order and has over 18,000 names included.

You can shake the phone to be presented with a random name or you can search for boys or girls names. You can even search for names by meaning, origin and my favourite… theme! Theme opens up a criteria such as geeky, celebrity or even traditional. The name generator certainly shakes the naming game up and puts some fun into what can sometimes be a stressful discussion between Mum and Dad.

There is a link to the Mothercare Blog through the app, so it is easier than ever to see what is going on over there and with life experiences from around 12 bloggers each giving a unique insight into parenthood you may just find yourself nodding along in unison.

The new Mothercare App is completely free to download and really is fantastic. So why not download it today and take a look for yourselves!?